H4H Unfair Advantage | Turbo Jr. (2026)
Cheating?
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The original paintings shown here can be found here
Limited edition reproductions can be found here
While intending to finish my suite of NES paintings (the last being done in 2016) for years, it was thanks to a fan that I finally got moving. A few years back, I acquired a complete R.O.B., which has been sitting dutifully behind me as I type since then, mocking me for my inattention to it. A couple years back, I also picked up an Advantage joystick. I had one left to get, as I wanted to do the last three together. That was the MAX controller. We’ll cover R.O.B. separately and focus on the controllers as they go together.
Back in the day, my best friend across the street had an Advantage controller. There were things I liked about it, the arcade form-factor of the joystick felt good, and how had we gotten that far without a good ball-topped joystick at home, while every home console maker kept experimenting with novel shapes, most of which didn’t work? The slow motion switch, which basically repeatedly activated the Start button, which more often than not was the game’s de facto pause button, could be useful, but was often annoying, especially on games with a pause chime.
The Turbo function was a revelation, however, and likely saved children around the country from early-onset RSI. It had speed-adjusting knobs, but who ever left them on anything but full-blast? I remember using the slow motion to practice the pattern for Yellow Devil in Mega Man so that I could eventually beat it full speed with ease. And while shooters in particular just felt tortuous without Turbo once you used it, and were, there was always a part of me that felt like it was cheating.
The MAX controller was less popular but just as interesting, maybe moreso. This one I owned, and became my go-to. The main reason I didn’t get an Advantage was that I usually played sitting up in bed with the controller resting on my bent legs, I didn’t grip it with my right hand at all, but used index and middle finger for A and B. The MAX allowed that posture to continue, and added full-blast Turbo. The cycloid on the d-pad was weird, and took some getting used to, if you really used it at all versus depressing the outer ring.
And yet, the MAX had more to do with the future than the Advantage. Firstly, the winged handles look like the missing link between the formerly rectangular controllers and today’s pads. It’s arguable that the Mega Drive may have innovated this, but I couldn’t discover which released first. For American audiences the MAX went first, since the Genesis didn’t arrive here until later.
But the awkward cycloid there would essentially disappear as a shelved idea until the Nintendo 3DS launched, at which point a form of it would return as its left analog stick.
In any case, I had not tracked down a MAX yet. And you might think, oh just go on eBay and get one. And indeed I might have if I had decided to finally paint these. Summer 2025 I attended MAG West in San Jose and attended a talk by The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment in Oakland. There they had some MAX controllers as part of the talk. Afterward, I took photos of it, and wondered if that might be sufficient to work from. But time after time I find I need the actual hardware with me, for final sizing, primarily, and for scrutinizing details that are sometimes unclear in photos. So I delayed, still.
It was at a recent Magic event that a player who was also a fan of this series came up to me and literally handed me one, to have. It was in amazing condition. I accepted it gladly, and it put me in overdrive to find time to finally paint these three, which I began shortly upon returning home. So, thank you to that player!
These pieces were featured in my March 2026 Livestream—not the most exciting one, certainly. In it, I worked on the background of all three paintings, and then finished off with a more extended period of time working on, “Turbo Jr.”